Every­day, The Paper­boy Brings More…

I’m cur­rently fol­low­ing two elec­tions. Yes. Pol­i­tics. If as a North Amer­i­can you don’t under­stand what so fun in that, remem­ber I’m French. Two elec­tions is to me what the Stan­ley Cup and the Super­bowl week-end is to you.

First, the March 26^th provin­cial elec­tion in Que­bec, the bat­tle between the Lib­er­als, le Parti Québé­cois and the ADQ (Action Démoc­ra­tique du Québec). Then the French pres­i­den­tial elec­tion to be held in April, with three main polit­i­cal par­ties (out of 14 !), the left-wing with Ségolène Royal, the right-wing leaded by Nico­las Sarkozy and the under­dog, François Bayrout.

French news­pa­pers are packed with the lat­est info from the cam­paign. Who did what last night, who said what, who is against who, who ral­lied who, who slept with whom (although the lat­est one is “only in France…”). Cit­i­zens are invited to write a name on a piece of paper and build a new world. Vote for me, I’m the best !

Errare Humanum Est…

I remem­ber, back in France. Started demon­strat­ing when I was just a baby. Later, as a teenager, I paced up and down the streets, hold­ing ban­ners and plac­ards. Played hide and seek with the cops, stop­ping in front of the pre­fec­ture, the clam­ors of indig­na­tion increas­ing when­ever the “enemy” was to be seen. We had been told that peo­ple could over­throw the power, that it was ours to take. I lost track of the num­ber of demon­stra­tion or strikes I par­tic­i­pated in, but I do know that Chirac has been pres­i­dent since 1995.

… Est Per­se­ver­are Diabolicum

At night, I used to sneak out to take part in Gen­eral Assem­bly. Up in a old attic room, con­fi­dent we were fight­ing the good fight, we rose up against racism, lib­er­al­ism, fas­cism, fun­da­men­tal­ism and nation­al­ism, not real­iz­ing we were at least as narrow-minded as the enemy. “One, two, three, what are we fightin’ for, don’t ask me I don’t give a damn…” Have you ever tried to make a deci­sion with left­ies when half of them is high and the other half is argu­ing whether vot­ing itself is a right-wing way of deciding ?

Sec­ond Hand Utopia

I thought my beliefs were rev­o­lu­tion­ary. We had been raised in a divided Europe, red vs. brown, a wall between the com­mu­nist beast and the Amer­i­can dream. A Europe who didn’t dare to truly believe in any­thing, to scared to fall back into extreme ide­ol­ogy. My gen­er­a­tion got the left-over of pretty much every polit­i­cal ten­den­cies. The good and the bad was clearly defined and our lit­tle rebel­lion was com­mon­place. We wanted to be orig­i­nal… but failed to be. Instead of car­ry­ing our par­ents’ fight, we should have invented our own. With all the main wars set­tled and lit­tle nov­elty on the board, no way we could win.

Wake up Com­rade, They Turned Crazy !

I can’t speak of the Que­bec elec­tion much since I live in Ontario and can’t vote any­way. But I do observe the cam­paign themes : immi­gra­tion, nation­al­ism, health care sys­tem, envi­ron­ment and var­i­ous bud­get are the main polit­i­cal pil­lars of the party, with the excep­tion of the ADQ which doesn’t seem to have a polit­i­cal plat­form what­so­ever and heav­ily relies on populism.

As for France, the coun­try still seems stuck in its own con­tra­dic­tions. Is it sup­posed to finally step back from the inter­na­tional scene and resolve its own prob­lems before lec­tur­ing other coun­tries ? Is it sup­posed to accept its mis­takes (colo­nial­ism, Alger­ian war, fas­cism, etc.) and move on ? It is ready to change ? Are peo­ple ready for change ? With all the can­di­dates with­out excep­tion well known on the polit­i­cal scene, noth­ing is less sure. Well, at least Chirac pub­licly announced he won’t aspire to a 3^rd man­date. Bless him, thank you, go see the judge now, he has a cou­ple of ques­tions for you about all the money you shame­lessly spent when you were Paris’ mayor.

I stopped doing pol­i­tics when I started trav­el­ing. Going to China was a first breach in my beliefs. I real­ized that my views on the world were euro-centered and that most of the crit­ics against the big Asian dragon were just a re-enactment of the Opium Wars. In Latin Amer­ica, I under­stood what being born on the “good” side of the world meant. With my French pass­port in hand, it was easy to cross the bor­ders, to get a stamp for my next des­ti­na­tion. I thought of all the Sal­vado­rian, try­ing to escape the civil war just a few years ago, pay­ing of their life the cross­ing to a neigh­bor­hood coun­try. In Chi­a­pas, I thought of the Sub­com­man­dante Marcos :

Nosotros naci­mos de la noche. En ella vivi­mos. Morire­mos en ella. Pero la luz será mañana para los más, para todos aque­l­los que hoy llo­ran la noche, para quienes se niega el día, para quienes es regalo la muerte, para quienes está pro­hibida la vida. Para todos la luz. Para todos todo. Para nosotros el dolor y la angus­tia, para nosotros la ale­gre rebeldía, para nosotros el futuro negado, para nosotros la dig­nidad insur­recta. Para nosotros nada.

Techo, tierra, tra­bajo, pan, salud, edu­cación, inde­pen­den­cia, democ­ra­cia, lib­er­tad, jus­ti­cia y paz. Estas fueron nues­tras ban­deras en la madru­gada de 1994. Estas fueron nues­tras deman­das en la larga noche de los 500 años. Estas son, hoy, nues­tras exigencias. ”

Comité Clan­des­tino Rev­olu­cionario Indígena-Comandancia Gen­eral del Ejército Zap­atista de Lib­eración Nacional)

These are the ideas I want to fight for. I don’t believe much any­more, but I do see the world glob­ally. Fight­ing for my region, my coun­try of my priv­i­leges doesn’t inter­est me. Do you think I want to com­plain about how much taxes I pay and write in to the Sun to claim that immi­grants are using them ? I don’t. Cause I don’t give a damn. You know what, France will always be the rebel coun­try, will always “fight” the USA, will always have this left-right wing bat­tle even though both par­ties are pretty much the same. You know what, North Amer­ica will always be the promised land for 75% of the peo­ple in this world and will always have the great­est gap of wealth between its cit­i­zens. Deal with it. I wel­come any idea for a change, but it doesn’t bother me that much.

What I want to change, what I wish I could change, is world­wide poi­son. The world’s des­tiny is still in the hand of the few cho­sen. It both­ers me that the Group of Eight allows him­self to con­trol our des­tiny. “Growth is mad­ness” as my old friends would say, and I tend to agree. World Eco­nomic Forum ? GATS ? MAI ? OECD ? WB ? IMF ? These bar­baric acronyms divided the world into the North and the South and are prais­ing the one-way though.

I don’t want such a world.

Yeah, still a dreamer.

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3. The Cul­ture Of Fear
4. Work­ing Class Hero Is Some­thing To Be
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